


Three Heartbeats, Four Hearts

by sunsetroots



Series: We Can Wander [3]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Death, Heartbeats, Immortality, More of a character piece/introspection than anything else tbh, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-05 02:24:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6685498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetroots/pseuds/sunsetroots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Clara hasn't really thought that much about hands before. She's thinking now.</i>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>(aka a short piece about Clara + the various people important to her through her life + hands)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Heartbeats, Four Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like i should change the title of this series to 'hand holding is Important.' because that seems to be all i write about.

_Clara hasn't really thought much about hands before. She's thinking now, as she sits with Me and Jenny on a small sofa, on their TARDIS with nothing but their hands pressed gently together, close enough to hear their breaths intermingling and synchronizing, close enough to see the fractional rise and fall that comes with each of their breaths._

 

She remembers being very young and having a goofy smile plastered across her face and her hands had felt so small in her mum and dad’s as the three of them carefully looked both ways before crossing a road together.

They had taught her how to throw, to hold a knife and fork and pen and screwdriver and toothbrush and whisk, to cook and tighten nuts and write and plait hair and sew and grip tree branches.

The Christmas of 2005 should've been spent happy and laughing and elated and talking about uni and her new life but instead she took the train home early, the sky as grey as it always was and she wasn't greeted by her mother's warm embrace as she should have been. Instead, she and her father had stood over her mother's grave and his hand in hers had been as cold as the tears on her cheeks and the gravestone at their feet.

 

The Doctor had grabbed her hand all the time (something, she suspected, he did with all his companions, grabbing onto them and literally _pulling_ them into his life, into his adventures).

She fell easily into step beside him, the two of them running down corridors and away from monsters, their sweaty palms pressed together.

Then he regenerated and the casual touch (even just of the brush of the tips of her fingers) became unwelcome but Clara adjusted. They still ran together but Clara took care not to be as easy with her affections as she was used to. The Doctor didn’t appreciate it anymore and she respected that.

They soon developed a system – a brief nod or a twitch of a finger, a sign to let her know that he was okay with it and then she could jump back into hugging him as tightly as she wanted, even though the shape of him was different and a little bit unknown.

Fortunately, the newness and strangeness didn’t last long and Clara smiled whenever he gave the signal in front of strangers, gripped onto his hand as tightly as ever.

“I _will_ hold Clara’s hand, but that’s it,” he said grumpily and Clara felt warmth spreading through her heart and into her chest and she thought she might explode with the depth of her feelings.

She said nothing, just slid her fingers between his and it meant something _more_  than it had before, more than it had when it was just a given, an accepted thing that was just _a thing_ they did. The contact hadn’t always been _a thing_ between her and this version of him so now that it was _a thing_ once again Clara appreciated it all the more.

 

Of an evening, Danny and her had wrapped around each other tightly – his arms wound around her shoulders and her hands pressed in loose grips around his wrists. His hands had been so so beautiful and she’d loved kissing his palms and the tips of his fingers and his wrists and every other part of him so slowly, so carefully, the two of them so cautious yet so quickly falling it had sometimes felt like they were leaves caught in a sudden gust of wind.

And Clara _had_ always been fond of leaves.  

All too soon she was gripping onto cold metal and crying against his chest. His face was stretched and mangled by cyber tech and he looked to be in so much pain. Clara could feel her heart beating solidly and she wondered if Danny's was still inside that metal casing, or whether it was in some sort of disposal somewhere, dead and rotting and dying.

She pressed a hand to his shoulder and didn't react to the cool metal this time, accustomed to it already. She swallowed past the lump in her throat and let him go, blinking through the blur of tears. 

It wasn't fair to make him live like this. He deserved better than this. _They_ deserved better than this. 

She was given hope again, the worst curse she could've been burdened with. She waited for him, waited for the doorway to open and for him to step through and join her again, waited for him to take her hand and kiss her gently, hot and real and _alive_ against her but instead she received a child she'd never set eyes on before.

She took a moment to herself to blink gently before she forced a smile and took the child's hand, leading him through to the kitchen to make him something warm, just in case her fake smile wasn't enough. 

She could guess how cold it was where he had been because she felt like ice was stabbing at her heart. 

 

She met Jane Austen and she almost immediately grabbed out, probably being a bit over the top with how firmly she gripped onto Austen's hands and she couldn't stop grinning manically, practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

She didn’t seem to mind and she responded with a small smile and they ended up very close so quickly that the intensity gave Clara some sort of emotional whiplash.

They sat under the same tree each time Clara visited and (when they weren't planning or carrying out meticulous pranks) talked and talked and their palms rested between them, pressed softly together and Jane’s smile was as bright as the summer sun.

When they kissed, just once, their fingers were still intertwined between them, twisted at an awkward angle but stopping to rearrange them would have broken the moment, so Clara put up with a slightly aching wrist.

She held onto Jane’s hand as she was dying, felt the skin turn clammy and cold beneath her fingertips and Clara didn’t cry until she was back home and alone, where there was no one to see her forced numbness explode into rage and anguish and fear.

Not that the Doctor would have cared and he was the only one left to see it now.

 

Then he forgot her. 

She had touched her own wrist with her fingertips, trying to reach the steady thrum of her own heartbeat, trying to find _something_ but finding nothing - just silence and deep, oppressive nothingness. 

And he had forgotten her. He looked at her and talked about her yet with no idea who she was, no idea of how deep they'd got into each other, how far he'd gone to save her, how wrong it had been in the end.

The blank spaces in his memory could be filled in but there wasn't a space to be filled for emotions, they didn't work like that and as he stared at her across the diner and talked of her as though he knew her better than she did, all she could do was breathe through her tears even though she didn't need the oxygen anymore and sip away at a drink and pretend she could feel how hot or cold it was, pretend it was soothing in any way.

 

For some reason, Clara was surprised to see that Me was still there. She had nowhere else to go, of course she'd still be there, waiting, probably for Clara to take her home.

Clara smiled at her across a stark white console and the console wasn't warm beneath her touch but it wasn't cold, it was just _there_ and Clara wondered whether that was how feeling would be for her from now on.

She hid her surprise when Me agreed to join her. It wasn't that unexpected after all. The Doctor had told her that Me wanted to travel with him.

They settled into an easy routine and it was like her and the Doctor had been in the very beginning, and they whirled off into the vortex and the desperate hand grabbing came naturally, the two of them holding onto each other as they ran off on adventures.

In a practical sense, it was almost easier with Me than it had been with the Doctor. Me was closer to Clara’s height, so the two of them matched speeds easily, didn’t get in each other’s way.

It worked out. They worked it out.

Me was otherwise reserved with touches, had been on her own for so long against the entire universe that casual touching was almost abhorrent to her.

Clara could almost understand that. Sometimes, something would touch her arm, brush her cheek, contact any part of her and she _wouldn’t feel it._

They never talked about it when that happened but Clara always felt like there was something shriveling up and dying inside of her, festering away and clogging up her throat and her eyes and she forced a smile and pulled away from whatever it was, trying not to show how terrified she was.

She hated it.

 

They met Jenny in a street full of light and Clara could remember the heat of her skin through Oswin’s memories and it was so odd because all she ever got were flashes of memory but Jenny _remembered her_ properly. 

Well, she remembered Oswin, not Clara. She remembered Oswin better than Clara did, in fact, and that was one of the strangest things Clara had ever experienced.

The three of them fell into the same routine as Clara and the Doctor had had, as Clara and Me had developed – running, fighting, grabbing onto each other’s hands as they did so, except it was new as well, there was three of them now.

Clara sometimes caught Me watching Jenny and her interact with an indecipherable look in her eyes. She decided to ask her about it one day and Me confessed that she wished she could remember how to touch people casually, that she _wanted_ to, but she didn’t want to feel like she was intruding or stepping out of line.

So Clara and Jenny started to initiate things – the small things that should seem inconsequential but to Clara and Me and Jenny they were like lifelines, like flashes of light in darkness, a much needed support from all sides until Me was comfortable enough with it to try initiating things of her own. 

 

Clara hasn't really thought much about hands before. She's thinking now, as she sits with Me and Jenny on a small sofa, on their TARDIS with nothing but their hands pressed gently together, close enough to hear their breaths intermingling and synchronizing, close enough to see the fractional rise and fall that comes with each of their breaths. 

If Clara concentrates, if she presses her fingers _just so_ and everyone remains still, she can convince herself that she can  _feel_ their heartbeats through her palms and she can pretend, for one small, sweet moment…

She can pretend that of their three heartbeats, one of them is hers.

**Author's Note:**

> this is version 2 of this fic bc i had it written out and ready to post and then forgot abt it and ao3 deleted it so :(( this one's chill tho i think it's a tad angstier than the original. hope u enjoyed it all the same. note 2 my future self: save ur work somewhere else u numbnut
> 
> \+ if anyone can let me know the etiquette for tagging this sort of thing i'd appreciate it because i'm never sure if it's better to tag all the mentioned relationships/characters or just the main ones you know ?? i hope u all have good days <3


End file.
